Back by popular demand, Dr. Matthew Arbo and Dr. Scott Coley join Amber Bowen and Dr. John Anthony Dunne for a joint discussion on Critical Theory. Dr. Arbo is Associate Professor of Theological Studies at Oklahoma Baptist University and was previously on our podcast episode entitled “Critical Theory and Ethics”; Dr. Coley is Lecturer of Philosophy and the Director of the Global Encounters program at Mount St. Mary’s University, and he was on our podcast episode entitled “Understanding Critical Theory.” In this episode we discuss whether some of the most common objections to Critical Theory (and particularly Critical Race Theory) constitute “Fact, Fiction, or Fallacy” (or some combination of the three). This episode was recorded Epiphany, the day of the violent insurrection against the US Capitol in Washington DC by pro-Trump extremists attempting to undermine our democracy while Congress was certifying the Electoral College votes. This blatant display of white privilege is an important backdrop to the conversation that we need to name explicitly and reject unequivocally. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As part of our broader series on gender in biblical scholarship, Christian tradition, and the contemporary church, we turn to discuss Women in the Patristic Era. In this episode, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Sangalang Ng, and Dr. Chris Porter are joined by Dr. Lynn Cohick, who is Provost and Dean of Academic Affairs, and Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lisle, Illinois. We begin by hearing how Dr. Cohick first became interested in the broader topic by studying the visions and spirituality of Julian of Norwich. As the conversation progresses, Dr. Cohick informs us about several prominent women in the early church, such as the martyr Perpetua, and St. Thecla and the cult that emerged in her remembrance. Dr. Cohick also responds to our questions regarding the way asceticism may have shaped the relative roles of women in the early church, how early Christians were reading the New Testament in regard to what it says about women, whether women in the early church held the same ministerial titles that we see in the New Testament, and whether the early church continues a liberative trajectory, such as the one Robert Webb sees in the development from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Continuing our conversation on gender dynamics in Scripture and the Church, in this podcast episode we talk about the binary of Complementarianism and Egalitarianism regarding how to conceive of the relationship of men and women in marriage and in the church. Has the entrenchment of the binary led us to miss aspects of the text? For this conversation, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Emmett, and Grace Sangalang Ng are joined by Dr. Michelle Lee-Barnewall, Associate Professor of New Testament at Biola University in La Mirada, CA and author of Neither Complementarian nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective To The Evangelical Gender Debate (with Baker in 2016). Over the course of the conversation Dr. Lee-Barnewall tells us what she finds to be deficient in both Complementarianism and Egalitarianism, what is often missing from and overemphasized in the debate, how her unique approach fits in church contexts, how Complementarians and Egalitarians alike have responded to her book, how her books fits into contemporary gender identity and gender discourse, and how to think of her ideas in the light of broader cultural interests in diversity of all sorts. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we talk about the significance of the women mentioned in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus. For this conversation, Dr. John Anthony Dunne and Brandon Hurlbert are joined by Dr. Jeannine Brown, Professor of New Testament at Bethel Seminary (St. Paul, MN), member of the NIV Translation Committee, and author of a few commentaries on Matthew. We talk about why genealogies are worth digging into rather than skipping, why it's significant that women are mentioned at all in a genealogy in the Bible, and what's significant about the four named women in Matthew's genealogy of Jesus (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and "the wife of Uriah"). Some read these four women in terms of the sexual scandals associated with their stories, but Dr. Brown calls our attention to their whole stories and how they are seen as paragons of faithfulness in the contexts of their stories. Additionally, Dr. Brown notes the ethnic commonalities between the four women as Gentiles.  We also discuss the similarities and differences between Luke and Matthew's genealogies, as well as the differences between their respect infancy narratives and whether Matthew's Magi should be included in Nativity sets for Christmas. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Carrying on in our conversation on gender, we turn to discuss women in 1 Corinthians with particular attention given to the passage about head coverings in 1 Cor. 11 and women being silent in the church in 1 Cor. 14. In this episode, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Brandon Hurlbert, and Dr. Logan Williams are joined by Dr. Lucy Peppiatt, who is Principal of Westminster Theological Centre in the UK and author of a number of related books, including Women and Worship at Corinth (Cascade, 2015), Unveiling Paul's Women (Cascade, 2018), and Rediscovering Scripture's Vision for Women (IVP, 2019). Dr. Peppiatt's background is in Systematic Theology, so she identifies herself as coming to the text as a theologian rather than a Pauline scholar. In her reading of 1 Cor. 11.2–16—the passage that speaks of head coverings and kind of sounds like women are inferior to men—these verses are not Paul's words, but rather part of rhetorical response to the perspective of the Corinthians. Dr. Peppiatt explains that she does not think that Paul believes these words, and that, if he did, the only legitimate interpretation in her view would be that Paul affirms the subordination of women both functionally and ontologically. She notes that this is how one scholar, Michael Lakie, reads the passage does, suggesting that Paul views women as subordinate and less than men. See Michael Lakie, Image and Glory of God: 1 Corinthians 11:2–16 As A Case Study in Bible, Gender, and Hermeneutics (LNTS 418; London: T&T Clark, 2010). On its face, Dr. Peppiatt does not disagree with Lakie's interpretation of 1 Cor. 11.2–16; she disagrees with him regarding who's perspective it is. She affirms that that theology is in the text, but she contends that it's the perspective of the Corinthians. If it were Paul's perspective, it would not fit what Paul says elsewhere in his letters, or what Jesus says in the Gospels, or indeed what we know from the rest of the Bible. For these reasons and more Dr. Peppiatt reads the passage as a rhetorical interaction with the Corinthian perspective. Such a reading benefits from the fact that Paul does quote “Corinthian slogans” elsewhere in 1 Corinthians, and so Dr. Peppiatt extends this phenomenon to include 1 Cor. 11.2–16. Otherwise, Dr. Peppiatt explains that there's also no reason for women to refrain from wearing head coverings either. At this point in the conversation we had a little bit of fun commenting on who was and wasn’t wearing head coverings during the recording of the podcast. From there we shift to 1 Corinthians 14 and the passage about women being silent in church. We talk about the interesting text-critical possibility that Paul did not write 1 Cor. 14.33b–36, and that these verses were inserted later by a scribe, but Dr. Peppiatt explains why she does believe that Paul wrote those words originally. We then discuss some practical matters about how to engage with people who are committed, on the basis of conscience and a sense of Scripture's authority, with reading 1 Corinthians 11 as teaching that head coverings are mandatory and women are subordinate to men ontologically. And further we conclude with hearing from Dr. Peppiatt on how people should address this topic further who want to see more women in ministry, but feel like they cannot get beyond what they see as the implications of 1 Cor. 11. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, and Grace Emmett are joined by Dr. Valérie Nicolet, Associate Professor of New Testament at the Protestant Institute of Theology in Paris, to continue an earlier podcast conversation on Paul and masculinity. Our conversation begins with Paul's self-presentation, esp. in Galatians, and then extends to address the fuzziness of gender categories in antiquity, as seen with Thecla from the Acts of Paul and Thecla. Dr. Nicolet addresses her "feminine masculinity" in the text and the implications of her baptizing herself. From the there the conversation becomes more meta, with a focus on the gendered culture of New Testament scholarship, which is so androcentric. As the conversation progresses, the episode reflects our most recent podcast with Dr. Ekaputra Tupamahu on the other default category in biblical scholarship of whiteness. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode a group of team members from The Two Cities (Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Emmett, Grace Sangalang Ng, Rev. Daniel Parham, Dr. Chris Porter, Dr. Logan Williams) are joined by Dr. Ekaputra Tupamahu, who is Assistant Professor of New Testament at Portland Seminary, to discuss his recent piece published with the Public Theology Network, entitled, “The Stubborn Invisibility of Whiteness in Biblical Scholarship” (Here is the link: https://politicaltheology.com/the-stubborn-invisibility-of-whiteness-in-biblical-scholarship/). Dr. Tupamahu explains that the key to resisting the imposition of whiteness onto others, Christian scholars ought to bring the church’s questions to scholarship rather than taking the scholarly nuggets to the church. Scholars are asking different questions than those in the church, but, more importantly, scholars also tend to be asking the questions of white European-Americans. One of the common issues in biblical studies that Dr. Tupamahu situates within the particular concerns of whiteness is the Synoptic Problem, which he contends is generated by the rise of the printing press in the West. Given this situatedness, Dr. Tupamahu provides some advice on how to teach Synoptic Problem as a uniquely European-American concern. Dr. Tupamahu also provides us with a sneak peek on how his own current research resists the concerns of whiteness, telling us that his current book project with OUP on “tongues" and “languages" in 1 Corinthians situates the discussion within the immigrant context of Corinth in which multiple languages would have been spoken. He explains how in the whole discussion on tongues Paul is insisting on monolingual order in a multilingual context.Dr. Tupamahu’s piece is part of a series of essays at the Public Theology Network, which are also worth checking out:Jacqueline Hidalgo, “Occupying Whiteness: A Reflection in 2020” (link: https://politicaltheology.com/occupying-whiteness-a-reflection-in-2020/).Angela Parker, “Invoking Paul’s μὴ γένοιτο and Sofia’s ‘Hell No’ Against the Stubborn Whiteness of Biblical Scholarship” (link: https://politicaltheology.com/invoking-pauls-%ce%bc%e1%bd%b4-%ce%b3%ce%ad%ce%bd%ce%bf%ce%b9%cf%84%ce%bf-and-sofias-hell-no-against-the-stubborn-whiteness-of-biblical-scholarship/). Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Carrying on with our series on gender and the Bible, Amber Bowen and Dr. John Anthony Dunne are joined by Aimee Byrd, who is the author of several books, including Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (Zondervan Academic, 2020). In this episode Aimee explains that, despite what one might suspect from her outspoken detractors, her book is ultimately about discipleship. She critiques the movement that appeals to "biblical manhood and womanhood" as truncating biblical gender down to discrete "roles" that are primarily defined in terms of leadership and submission. The result is a "biblical" portrait that is narrow and damaging. Further, she calls out the "fractional" approach to complementarity that views men and women as two halves respectively that only create a single whole when together. Instead, Aimee points to an "integral" complementarity, where marriage is seen as a process in which two "wholes" come together to generatively create something new. Although she is critical of the complementarian approach, in this podcast she explains her reasons for not being an egalitarian. And at the end of the conversation, Aimee gives us a sneak peek on her new writing project on gender-related matters. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Continuing our discussion on gender from last week with Grace Emmett ("Paul & Masculinity"), we turn to look at the relationship between preaching and gender. In this episode, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Sangalang Ng, Rev. Daniel Parham, and Dr. Chris Porter reflect on this topic  from the vantage point of our different cultural and ecclesial contexts. Rather than debate particular texts and their meaning in a prescriptive manner, we discuss how various cultural factors have contributed to the relative normativity of gender diversity in preaching in our various denominational settings. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kicking off a discussion on gender in the Bible and how this syncs up the Western Church and broader culture, Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, and Dr. Logan Williams chat with Grace Emmett, a PhD Candidate in New Testament at King's College, London, who recently submitted a thesis entitled, "Becoming A Man: Unmanly/Manly Self-Presentation in the Pauline Epistles." In this episode we discuss masculinity as presented in the Pauline epistles and reflected in ancient culture, including questions of whether Paul is subversive or imitative of his surrounding culture. Grace highlights several unique features of Paul, such as maternal metaphors that he applies to himself, but ultimately contends that Paul should not be read as neither a chauvinist nor a proto-feminist. Given the ramifications that this conversation has for the contemporary Western church, we address matters of gender neutrality in biblical translation, concerns of the feminization of the church, and also the usefulness of gendered church events (i.e. Men's night), gendered Christian resources (i.e. Women's Study Bibles), and gendered conferences (i.e. Promise Keepers). Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.